OK, so first off, as the title says, there will be spoilers in here. So if you’re planning on reading it and haven’t yet already, please stop.

I read the series as a teenager and absolutely love them. Recently, I have taken the time to reread all five of them, and have to say I was slightly disappointed. I still thought that the writing was very amusing, the social commentary was good and the lightly touched philosophical discussions were good as well. My main problem concerns character development, or better said, the complete lack thereof in my opinion. I found that most disturbing into different aspects:

The lack of real, meaningful friendship between characters

As an example, Arthur and Ford are supposed to be friends, but from the interaction in the book it seems more like they tolerate each other and don’t really appreciate each other’s presence or influence on their adventures. Every time they get out of touch, they don’t appear to feel sorry about it, and when they see each other again, they are extremely British about it. This also applies to the other characters in my opinion.

the complete abandonment of the relationship between Arthur and Fenchurch

So, in the first three books, Arthur is like this maladjusted guy, who really doesn’t know what his place in the universe is. This also applies to his personal relationships. Then, he meets a woman that is presented as his soulmate, someone that finally understands him and respects/likes him the way he is. All of a sudden, she disappears into thin air, and she’s only mentioned one more time in the book series. Arthur seems happy to just make sandwiches and doesn’t seem to mourn this loss too much after the initial search. To me, this makes the character rather shallow. I appreciate the author was not trying to write a novel about love in space, or whatever, but still, it feels a bit lacking to me.

I will end my rant here, I am very curious as to your opinions on this matter. Do you feel like I’m just expecting too much from these books or do you tend to agree with these criticisms?

What the title says, I'm tired of the trope where humans are the least advanced in the universe.

I'd like to read something different where we're the more advanced ones (not necessarily the most advanced). As an example I quite enjoyed the Ender's Game sequels and the angle of us being the more advanced ones was quite interesting.

Do you have any recommendations?

I'm looking for sci-fi books that are (partially or fully) about environmentalism, preserving nature or the consequences of not doing so.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/42666

I recently discovered Bookwyrm and am really liking it. It's not quite as full-featured as The Storygraph or Goodreads but it covers all of the most important functionalities and it's federated which I appreciate. Something that it is missing Vs either The Storygraph or Goodreads at the moment is volume of reviews (ie. Volume of users.) However, your review won't get lost in the sea so much and I've found that it's been quite easy to find readers with similar interests.

Anyway, who here is using Bookwyrm? What's your account so we can all follow each other? (Mine is Unfreeze4257@books.theunseen)

For me in SciFi I've been trying to hit some classics so I've read 'The Iron Dream' by Norman Spinrad, 'A Time of Changes' by Robert Silverberg and also the (recent release) 'Out of the Ruins' anthology.

Of those three I enjoyed 'The Iron Dream' the most since I didn't enjoy Silverberg's potraryal of women (and it doesn't seem to have literary intent like in 'The Iron Dream'.) 'Out of the Ruins had some bangers but it was a fairly inconsistent collection for me that mostly hasn't been memorable.

So, what are you currently reading or have recently read?